Bedtime Story (36 page)

“Thank you,” I had said, holding the crystal in my hand.

In the days before my flight, I had tried to find out as much as I could about the Hunter Barlow Library, the private collection that had bought Lazarus Took’s papers in 1949. There wasn’t much information online: the library’s own website seemed wilfully unhelpful, while other sites referred to the library’s impressive collection of occult materials, “which runs as a counterpoint to the mainstream of the twentieth century.”

Even with packing and preparations, I’d spent as much time as possible at the hospital. David was becoming more responsive: he could eat and chew, and was able to walk, haltingly and with a walker, a few steps at a time. But his level of catatonia meant he was incapable of initiating even the most basic of actions. Jacqui could lead him into the bathroom and sit him on the toilet, but left to his own devices he would wet himself and not even notice. His will, his awareness, his initiative, were all gone.

And now I knew exactly where they were.

Under the light from the hotel desk lamp, the symbols on the cover of
To the Four Directions
still glowed faintly.

“I know you don’t want to talk,” I had said to Jacqui last night, before we left the hospital.

She took a deep breath and stiffened. Preparing herself.

“But I’m wondering if you could do me a favour while I’m gone. For David.”

Reaching into my bag, I pulled out a thick sheaf of papers: a photocopy of
To the Four Directions
. “Could you read to him while I’m gone?”

She looked at me disbelievingly.

“Please. It’s important.”

Pursing her lips, she took the papers.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve marked the place where we left off. It’s important that he be read to as close to eight o’clock as possible.”

She rolled her eyes as she turned away.

“I know you don’t believe it. It’s probably just a coincidence, but he hasn’t had any seizures since I’ve been reading to him at the usual time, and I’m hoping, even if you do it just to humour me—”

“I said I’d do it, didn’t I?” she snapped.

Her response silenced me for a moment. “You didn’t, actually.”

She’d lowered her eyes. “Well, I will.”

Now I glanced at my watch and did the time-zone math in my head. Just before dinnertime at home—a good time to call.

Jacqui answered on the third ring.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“I made it in okay.”

Nothing.

“I left you a note with my hotel information, my flight numbers and stuff.”

“I got it.”

“Good,” I said. “How’s David?”

“He’s home.”

“What?” Thinking I must have misheard her.

“He’s home. I checked him out today. I’ve got a bed set up for him in the family room for the time being.”

“What? When did this …?”

“The doctor said we could try it, with his progress in the rehab and the fact that he hasn’t had any seizures in a week. We were about to have some dinner.”

“Why didn’t you wait till I was home?” I asked, almost too stunned to ask.

“Why?” she scoffed. “If I’m doing all of this on my own, what difference does it make what time zone you’re in?”

“Jacqui—”

“I’ve gotta go,” she said. “I’m making dinner.”

I sat at the end of the bed for several minutes, the cell phone dead in one hand, the other clutching the solid warmth of the crystal through my shirt.

David lay flat on his back, unable to sleep, staring up at the starry sky.

It’s beautiful
.

It is
, Matt agreed, his voice touched with wonder. It took David a moment to realize that this was probably the first starry night Matt had seen in who knows how long.

Do you think they’re the same stars here
, he asked,
as at home?
The thought of home, his mother and his father, his hamster Nolan, cut him with sadness. He couldn’t imagine how much harder it must be for Matt, and he immediately regretted asking the question.

Maybe
, Matt said, not giving any indication of sadness.
It’s a lot like home in a lot of ways
.

David tried to still his mind as he watched the flickering of the stars. A question was coming together, and he tried not to think it, tried to keep it from Matt’s attention. But struggling to avoid the question only seemed to bring it into focus, like that old trick of trying not to think about an elephant.

What do you think happened to us
, he thought,
back there? In the real world, I mean. To our bodies?

The question had been gnawing at the edge of his mind since he had awoken in the cave and realized that his old body, which couldn’t
really run, couldn’t play baseball, with its too-small hands and too-short height had been replaced by these tough, rough hands, this rangy height, this body too skinny to get comfortable on the hard ground.

I think I died
, Matt said simply.
I remember
—His voice grew tight. This was obviously something that he had tried not to think about.
I remember reading. In my bedroom. It was the Fourth of July. My friends were setting off fireworks in the alley behind the Bartell Drugs. But I didn’t go. All I wanted to do was read
.

David remembered that feeling.

I got to that section in the cave, and when Matthias reached for the stone, it felt like I got a … a shock A bad one. The last thing I remember is dropping the book, and the taste of blood in my mouth. And then … I was here
.

David couldn’t breathe.

But that doesn’t mean you died
, David thought, arguing against the worst of his own fears.

You saw me. I don’t know of any other way for a spirit to come out of a body
, he said.
Do you?

“Magic,” David whispered.

It’s all magic
, Matt said, his words bitter and pointed.
And I think we both know who’s to blame
.

David thought of Loren, and the huge book he carried. The book the magus thought only he could read.

Exactly
, Matt said.

David pictured his room, his body lying lifeless on the carpet. It didn’t feel like he had died. He could still remember everything about his old life, a connection to his old self like he might be able to pull himself back to his body at any time.

If only he knew how.

Maybe that’s the way ghosts always feel
, Matt said.
Maybe that’s why they keep trying to go back
.

T
HE TELEPHONE JARRED ME
from a fractured sleep of strange, unpleasant dreams. Hotel-sleep: one of the reasons I didn’t like to venture too far from home.

“Hello,” I groaned into the phone, expecting it to be Jacqui.

“Mr. Knox?”

I sat up in bed at the sound of the strange voice. A man’s voice. And then it occurred to me that Jacqui would have called my cell.

“Yes?”

“It’s Tony Markus calling. From Davis & Keelor. I’m glad I caught you.”

Sleep-addled, it took me a moment to recognize the name. “Right. Tony Markus.”

“How was your flight?”

It was too surreal to continue having this conversation in the curtain-blotted dark. “Fine,” I said as I reached for the lamp on the bedside table.

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. And I’m glad to hear that you changed your mind and decided to come to New York.”

“How did you get this number?” I was starting to put things together. I had managed to avoid Tony Markus’s e-mails and calls for the past week—there was no way he should have known that I was in New York.

“Oh,” he said. “I spoke to your wife. She was kind enough to tell me where you were staying.”

Still more questions, but I didn’t have time to ask them. And then I noticed the time on the clock-radio: noon.

“I wonder if you’d let me buy you lunch?” he asked without pause.

“Or breakfast, perhaps, from the sound of things.” He chuckled. “I’m hoping we could talk about—”

“Lazarus Took,” I finished for him, trying to think of ways to avoid lunch.

“Well, yes, that, of course,” he said. “But actually, I’d like to talk to you about your own work.”

That brought me up short. “My work?”

“I didn’t put it together when we first spoke. Different contexts and such, I suppose. But I read
Coastal Drift
when I was in college. I loved it. I just loved it.”

Absolutely speechless.

“I was hoping we’d have a chance to sit down and talk about it, and about what you’re working on now.”

“Sure,” I said. “Do you have someplace in mind?”

“Well, that depends on your plans for the rest of the afternoon.”

I told him that I was hoping to spend a few hours at the Metropolitan Museum and he quickly suggested a restaurant just off Lexington, a few blocks from there.

“It’s a small place, pretty low-key, but the food is fabulous.”

He gave me thorough directions, but a subway ride later, still sleep-addled, I almost walked past it: there was a single window and a small, unassuming door with D
ONOFRIO’S
on a brass plate and the hours below. I saw no indication at all that it was a restaurant.

I checked my watch. Fifty-five minutes from bed to brunch—not too shabby. Juggling my coffee cup between my hands, I managed to light a cigarette without spilling a drop.

The first cigarette of the day, with a hot coffee on a sunny New York spring afternoon—it really didn’t get any better than that. I could almost forget what was happening at home. Almost.

“I can’t believe my eyes,” said an overweight man who had lumbered up beside me, his voice thick with a Brooklyn accent.

I glanced over at him, assuming he was talking on a cell phone, surprised to see him looking directly at me.

“I thought you West Coast types were all about healthy living and yoga and that sort of thing.” He extended his hand. “Tony Markus,” he said.

Cocking the cigarette in the corner of my mouth, I shook his hand. “Chris Knox,” I said. “How did you know it was me?”

He smiled broadly and took the book out from under his arm. It was the hardcover of
Coastal Drift
, the one with my picture on the flyleaf. The same one Tara Scott had been carrying.

I already preferred that meeting to this one.

“I’m a little older than that now,” I muttered. “It’s a wonder you recognized me at all.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you out here smoking, either,” he said.

I took one last drag and flicked my butt into the street. “I’m a writer,” I said, blowing out the smoke as Tony held the restaurant door open for me. “Someone’s got to conform to the stereotypes.” I wasn’t sure who I had stolen the line from.

He grinned. “I guess that means martinis with lunch.”

Dawn arrived eventually, the black sky fading to the purple hue of a bruise. The camp came quietly to life with the sound of men stowing their bedrolls, packing their horses. They did not speak.

David rose slowly, his body aching. Shivering in the cool air, he went in search of the magus.

A short distance from the camp, close to the river’s edge, the old man was leaning over a flat rock, looking intently down at something by the faint glow of a lamp. He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Ah, Dafyd. I trust you slept well, after yesterday’s hardships.”

His voice was so friendly David wondered if his suspicions, his and Matt’s fears, were misplaced. But then he saw the massive book tucked under the old man’s arm.

“Not really,” he said. He took several steps forward.

“That’s unfortunate,” Loren said. “There are more hard days to come, I think.”

David gestured with his hand toward the rock. “Is that the map?”

“Yes, yes,” the old man said. He beckoned for David to come closer.

David reluctantly joined him.

The magus had laid the map out on the surface of the rock, with stones on each corner to keep it flat.

“I’ve lined it up so the compass faces north,” he explained, gesturing at the silver disk with the red stone. “And the river on the map is aligned with the actual river. It’s just a guess, really, but if something is to happen at dawn it seems to me that it might be best if everything is lined up and ready.”